"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Posts tagged ‘FutureCycle Press’

The wonderful Robert S. King and Diane Kistner at FutureCycle Press are launching a new journal: Good Works Review, now open for submissions.

From the website:

“Submissions to our first issue are now open (see guidelines) for poetry, short fiction, literary essays, and black-and-white artwork. We will not publish online but in an annual printed issue along with a Kindle e-book version, usually in December of each year.

Like Kentucky Review, this new publication is part of FutureCycle Press’s Good Works Projects. All proceeds from sales of GWR are donated to the ACLU.

Joel Peckham is a scholar, essayist and poet who has published a book of essays, two books of poetry, and two chapbooks His work has appeared in many literary and academic journals including The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, The Black Warrior Review, Riverteeth, The North American Review and American Literature Currently he is an Assistant Professor of Regional Literature and Creative Writing at Marshall University.

“A Chevy up on blocks is only an eyesore
to the faithless.”-from “Husks”

In GOD’S BICYCLE, Joel Peckham’s fifth collection of poetry, he offers a spiritual road mix for 21st-century America. In poems that travel from the heartland through Appalachia to New England, he sings a song crafted from his own strange brew of off-kilter, irreverent psalms, prayers, hymns, aubades, and elegies in praise and homage to a fragmented but beautiful landscape and people. Drawing as much from rockabilly as Whitman, these poems are always intense and often exuberant, even in their struggle for the kind of hope that can “rise green and leafy from a bitter soil.”

Readings scheduled so far for this fall in West Virginia (this coming weekend! Thank you Love you Mary Imo Stike!), two in October: one here at Longwood, and one in the Charlotte area (Thank you Love youJonathan Kevin Rice!), and then in December in WInston Salem (Thank you Love you Kathryn Milam!)

And BIG GRATITUDE to the fabulous generous editors who made these crazy lil books possible–Karen Kelsay Davies with Kelsay Books and Diane Kistner and Robert S. King with FutureCycle Press

This week I keep going back to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, about grief, about sheer physicality of grief and loss. About feeling helpless. About how loss, no matter what, belongs to all of us.

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I Want to Bring the Birds

inside, hold them in my hands, tuck them inside my shirt, claws and all, feel the sharp tic of each frightened beak, surround them with my fingers, cradle them against the cage of my ribs, whisper shh shh shh—until they each find and linger in their place: the titmice tatting nests into my hair, crested sparrows and juncos perched and singing from my feet, the jays who see me as so much meat, supplier of suet and otherwise foolish and useless, each take a shoulder, their alarm squawk sudden and hard as a couple of crows stand sentry on my back. The chickadees, those flying golf balls with their punk rock eyes and ebony mohawks, bossy and brazen, take my ears, letting me know just how they see this whole thing going, while the shy nuthatch hides, its cinnamon shadow disappearing under my shirt as it hops up my ribs and nuzzles in like a newborn near my heart. A pair of doves, and then another, their wings ash gray and spotted with apricot, nestle in on the soft give of my belly; I touch them with just the tips of my fingers, hoping, praying, they’ll teach me the tender songs only possible in the dark. One by one, they all settle in, on my limbs, my skin, feathering, resting, and maybe, so will I, settle for real, for the first time in years, as I hear and feel their heartbeats steady, slow, ease finally, into a companion rhythm with my own. Or mine to theirs? In my dreams, it doesn’t matter. In my dreams,we are the same.

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This poem is included in my collection The Night I Heard Everything from FutureCycle Press.

Yesterday was a hard day. I am so disheartened by the viciousness of this political season, but thanks to the kindness of people yesterday, I am reminded that the choice for Joy is mine to make, that Gratitude is my way.

Yep. Today is a better day, thanks to the kindness of people yesterday and last night, and thanks to the unfollow button, and thanks to my sewing and my crazy hippie yard, and the puppies, and my kids, and my beautiful sister Crickett, and to all the beautiful reminders of how Light is the answer to shadow, kindness is the answer to nastiness, compassion is the answer to fear, and Love is the way of it all.

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from my book A Little Blood, A Little Rain, from FutureCycle Press

Praise This and That

no matter the slip of time, no matter the hip that aches at night, no matter the growing silence that stands at the edge of the bed, waiting for you to rise into another day past fifty, another year past young. Praise the getting up, praise the shower songs to be sung. Praise the towel, the soap, the float of lavender scented steam. Praise the lingering edges of a dream you want to remember, and then praise the memory as it slides away. Praise the click and hum of the heater as it warms the day. Praise the robe like a frayed old friend. Praise the beginning of the day and the reminder that night can end. Praise the miracle of pockets, the chime of the chain and locket you string around your neck. Praise the giggle that comes when you’re glad that no one hears you sing in the morning. Praise the desire that keeps you singing. Praise the foggy mirror, the sweetness of toothpaste, the ringing clink of cups on counters. Praise the shuffle comfort of slippers, praise the arch of the foot and the more than half a century of walking. Praise the coolness of the tile, the remembered talk of children and their school day laughter. Especially praise the tender mothering of water. Praise the doors and windows, that they open and close as they do. Praise the light switch and the fragile bulb, the pup who shakes with joy that you’re awake. Praise the give and the take of family. Praise even that angry cat with her yellow eyes, who waits in the middle of the kitchen floor, looking pointedly at the door while the coffee brews, who points her lock-picking paw at you, as if to say, You are not, you know, as quick as you used to be. Praise the brown-edged toast, the seaside smell of butter as it melts, the cream that ribbons the coffee, the svelte red bird with its glass bead eye who watches you through the window that needs washing, wanting to know exactly when you plan to put out that seed you promised. Praise the music of his scolding, the way he ignores the caucusing crows. Praise the clothes, both clean and needing washing. Praise the sweater your mother gave you, the one you thought you hated but know now feels like love. Praise the practicality of closets, the keys that jingle as you claim them. Praise the rituals as you name them. Praise the doorway where you linger, to look back at the tumble of sheets you’re grateful to have but haven’t straightened. Praise the way your throat thickens, the elevator drop of your heart, praise the tears of remembering when. Praise all things, the beginning and the end. Praise the struggle and the storm, praise the sun that follows, that ladder of light from window to floor. Praise the constancy of both the living and the dead. Praise knowing how to live and learning how to die. Praise even the cold side of the bed, where love used to lie. Praise the door as you close it. Praise the gratitude you feel, for the warm, for the loss, but especially for the love, for having had the chance, if even just for a time, to know it.